A New Sensation in Iraq: Motor Scooters

Often imported from China and bearing almost familiar names like “Yomaha” or “Mucati Classic,” scooters have taken Baghdad by storm.

CARA BUCKLEY

BAGHDAD — Violence may be down in Iraq, but road rage is up.

Every day, more cars venture onto Baghdad’s dust-choked streets, adding to epic traffic jams and sending blood-pressure levels through the roof, as drivers spew invective, gesticulate wildly and steadfastly ignore any and all driving laws.

But tens of thousands of Baghdadis have found an antidote in the venerable motor scooter. Often imported from China and bearing almost familiar names like “Yomaha” or “Mucati Classic,” scooters have taken the city by storm, providing a nearly ideal way of getting about in a war-weary town riddled with checkpoints and bedeviled by car bombs.

“I love it, it’s really great,” said Hathan Jawad, a 35-year-old with gray-flecked hair and a tobacco-stained smile. “When there’s a traffic jam I can just weave around the cars, or go onto the sidewalks.”

He had just bought himself a brand new, gunmetal gray “Yomaha Classic” for 911,000 Iraqi dinars, or $750. It was worth every dinar, he said, and not just because it allows him swift passage through Baghdad’s lengthy traffic snarls.

Guards at checkpoints often wave scooters through. Soldiers tend to view scooter drivers with less suspicion because, unlike people in cars, their bodies are in plain sight. Scooters are easy to navigate around blast walls.

They also cost a fraction of the price of a new car and require far less gas, a bonus in a country where fuel prices are soaring. One scooter vendor said many of his recent buyers were refugees returning from Syria who had sold their cars, depleted their savings and could afford little else.

Mr. Jawad loves his scooter because, quite simply, it is fun, what with the wind whipping through his hair and car drivers gnashing their teeth as he blithely scoots by.

“You know, I feel very happy on my scooter,” he said.

Baghdadis insist that traffic in their city was orderly under Saddam Hussein. But since his fall, chaos has reigned on the streets. Electricity is in short supply and traffic signals rarely work; the few that do are ignored. People drive on the wrong side of the road, on medians, on sidewalks. Hours are lost daily to what people here simply refer to as “the jam.”

These days, reasons for buying scooters can stretch beyond saving money and time. Ownership carries the implication that one is of lesser means, a good thing in a city where having money draws attention of the wrong kind.

“People don’t want others to know that they have enough money to buy a car,” said Safa Mustaf, a 30-year-old scooter vendor. “A new car can cost $20,000 or $30,000, and there is militia everywhere. If they see your car, they might ask to borrow it. Or kidnap you.”

Mr. Mustaf, who wears cowboy boots and has an easy grin, runs a shop in what is known as the motorcycle market in central Baghdad. The market street runs beneath a web of jury-rigged electric wires that stretch like plastic string. Its sidewalks are lined with mud-caked used motorcycles, oily engine parts and row upon row of shiny new scooters.

Mr. Mustaf’s top seller, imported from China, is the “Super Yanaha Helux,” in cherry red. It costs $850, has shiny chrome rear-view mirrors and a speedometer that goes up to about 90 miles per hour, a speed he swears it can reach.

Mr. Mustaf opened his shop 18 months ago, when there were only two other scooter vendors between him and the sand-colored mosque that sits at the north end of the motorcycle market’s street. Since then, another half dozen scooter shops have opened, he said, with more on the way. People prefer scooters over motorcycles, he said, because they are easier to ride.

“Since I opened, the number of scooters on Baghdad’s streets has grown by 50 times,” Mr. Mustafa said proudly. How many scooters, then, were on the city streets? He smiled broadly, and offered a wild estimate. “A million!” he exclaimed.

A thriving support network for the care and maintenance of scooters and motorbikes also lines motorcycle row. One technician, begrimed and in blue overalls, said he had benefited from the increased number of Chinese imports.

“The Japanese ones, they never have defects,” said the technician, as he untangled a nest of wires springing from a partly dismantled scooter. “But the Chinese ones, their electric wiring always goes.”

Yet dark clouds hang over Baghdad’s scooter drivers. The police have started enforcing a traffic law that requires owners to register for expensive scooter licenses. They have also started barring smaller, slower scooters from the city’s streets, saying they are unsafe on Baghdad’s roads.

Scooter accidents are increasing. And suicide bombers have been known to ignite their explosives on scooters, so the police and soldiers have begun stopping and searching some scooters and their drivers.

Such troubles seemed far from Mr. Jawad’s mind as he revved his prized Yomaha one recent sunlit afternoon. He squinted, lighted a cigarette and slipped on a pair of plastic mirrored sunglasses. His son, Amir, 12, was riding with him, and looped his arms around his father’s waist.

“My wife tells me not to drive fast,” Mr. Jawad said, sharply inhaling the smoke. “I never obey what she says.” He paused, exhaled and reconsidered. “But my son is with me.” So that day, he said, he would go about 50 miles per hour.

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